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Troubleshooting H5P errors

A guide for dealing with the most frequent problems met when setting up and administering the H5P plugin on your site.

We are continually updating H5P and fixing issues that we find or that are reported along the way. Before posting about an issue, please check the latest updates to see whether there is a fix for your issue. A list of recent updates can be found in the Release Overview page.

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Network Communication Issues

The problems listed in this section must be handled by the system administrator. Several different messages may be displayed when an H5P site fails to communicate with h5p.org:

Failed fetching external data

Failed communicating with the H5P HUB

Failed registering site at H5P HUB

Got no content types from HUB

You should first verify your H5P site is able to communicate with h5p.org e.g. by using the ping command (run it on your server). If that fails, it might e.g be a problem with the server's DNS setup or it might be a firewall or similar blocking the traffic.

A common problem we see with Guzzle is that a required certificate is not present when using the HTTPS protocol.You can usually solve this by adding a valid "cacert" to your server setup. See papi Joe's comment for more information.

Invalid H5Ps

The problems listed below are mainly relevant for developers, and can most probably be seen during the development phase

The file you uploaded is not a valid HTML5 Package (It does not have the .h5p file extension)

An h5p file has to have the .h5p file extension to be valid

Unable to unzip H5P file

The file you uploaded is not a valid HTML5 Package. The H5P file you were trying to use was not possible to unzip. It might be corrupt.

Invalid h5p.json file

The h5p.json file is either missing or it is not valid. It could be that the content you're uploading is using newer versions of H5P than what is installed on the site you're uploading content to. (If you're using H5P.com note that H5P.com is two weeks behind H5P.org)

Invalid content folder

The H5P is missing the mandatory content folder.

Invalid content.json file

Could not find or parse the content.json file

Library directory name mismatch

Library directory name must match machineName or machineName-majorVersion.minorVersion (from library.json)

Missing required library

A mandatory library is missing from your package

Missing library dependency

One of the library dependencies is missing

Invalid library name

The library name is not according to the specification

Invalid library.json file

The library.json file is missing/not readable, or the content is not according to the specification

Invalid semantics.json file

The semantics.json file is missing/not readable, or the content is not according to the specification

Invalid language file

A language file included is not following the specification

Missing file

A mandatory file is missing from the library

Missing required property in library.json

The library.json content is not following the specification

Illegal option in library.json

The library.json content is not following the specification

Other issues

A mix of issues that does not fit in the other categories.

API version unsupported

You are trying to install an H5P library which requires a newer version of the API. Please update the H5P module/plugin

Insecure file in H5P

There is a file in your H5P that is not allowed inside an H5P because of security

Hey, i want to know why when i'm going to upload content from iFrame embedder in moodle appear the error of "missing required library" and "Validating h5p package failed." what should i do? i really need to know.

was the plugin installation wrong? or i have to install other version or just other plugin?

Well, actually yesterday the engineer upgrade the plugin of the recent version, but also I discover that some content it's not allowed for some users, for example For me are only 15 functions avaliable and for a partner are 39 avaliable so what we can do? Is it maybe about configuration?

Today I tried uploading the sample .h5p video file to my moodle 2.8.9 website. I have installed the h5p plugin today and it shows as version 1.7 in my moodle plugin manager.

However, when I tried uploading the .h5p file of the interactive video type, it showed me an error message telling me I'm running an older version of h5p than my plugin manager tells me. I spliced the message below. What to do?

Validating h5p package failed.

The system was unable to install the Interactive Video component from the package, it requires a newer version of the H5P plugin. This site is currently running version 1.14, whereas the required version is 1.15 or higher. You should consider upgrading and then try again.Get help

The message is misleading. The content type tells you which version of the H5P core it requires, not which version of the moodle plugin. If you update your moodle plugin (to the current 1.10), you will also have the required core version.

Hi Oliver, I'm trying to find the place where i can update the moodle plugin but I can't for the life of me find it. I just freshly installed moodle and the plugin from the h5p page on the moodle plugin website. Can you give me a pointer?

By design the H5P contents will download all library depencies when you are installing a specific content but as we know computers have a mind of their own and sometimes they do not adhere to the design :-). I just tried this on a fresh install and I was able to install Memory Game without any issues. I'm glad that it is working for you now.

This is possible if you use Course Presentation, Column or Quiz (Question Set). You can use the copy/paste option of H5P contents to copy the existing content and paste it into one of those content types. Please note that you can only paste a content type that can be created in one of those 3. For example you can copy/paste a Drag and Drop activity into a Course Presentation but not a Branching Scenario.

I am trying to import content I exported via the Reuse link at the bottom of the content on H5P.org. I have tried this on multiple content items and each time I receive the Missing Required Library error. Each of the export files has a .h5p extension. What's up?

The content types on h5p.org have just had a new update which is not yet available on H5P.com. The reason for this is the enhanced quality assurance process we have before releasing new updates to H5P.com which take a little more time. We expect you should be able to upload content from h5p.org again in 1-2 weeks.